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February 2012

… For eight decades, the greatest mass murder in modern history has been shamefully covered up or ignored … If we keep demanding that Germany and Japan atone for their wartime crimes, is it not time for our governments to finally recognize and atone their alliance with the biggest mass murderer in history, Josef Stalin, a man whose crimes exceeded those of Adolf Hitler by a factor of at least three or four times? Particularly so in the United States, where World War II has become something of a state religion and is endlessly invoked by conservatives and neocons to justify foreign military adventures.

The well-entrenched idealization of Churchill is part and parcel of a drastically misleading view of the Second World War that Americans have been fed for decades. One common deceit is to give the impression that Hitler sought war against Britain and France, and that Germany aggressively attacked those two countries… Churchill's enduringly stellar image is all the more remarkable considering that his views on a range of issues were, by today's standards, hopelessly backward and politically incorrect… Along with most Britons (and Americans) of his era, he was also an unabashed racist.

The One Thousand Bomber Raid on Cologne, 1942
History Channel – Video
On the night of May 30-31,1942, the central area of the Rhineland city of Cologne was almost totally destroyed in a British one-thousand bomber air attack. Thereafter the city was regularly bombarded until 1945, in a campaign that Allied leaders privately acknowledged was terroristic.

… An examination of the papers collected over nearly three decades reveals a politician of moderate-to-liberal beginnings, a product of the civil rights era who moved to the right with an eye on political expediency — and privately savaged Republicans he was praising in public. Even as he gained a reputation as a conservative firebrand, the documents show Gingrich was viewed by his staff primarily as a tactician — the “tent evangelist” of the conservative movement, one staffer said — with little ideological core. The files offer a candid glimpse of the former House speaker, a man who could be charming and self-effacing one moment, ambitious and grandiose the next, an admittedly disorganized manager who viewed his role as nothing less than saving the Western world.

Nazi forgers ‘destroyed’ confidence in British currency by flooding Europe with forged Bank of England notes, the MI5 files reveal. There were so many counterfeits in circulation that officials even considered recalling all British bank notes and starting afresh. The papers describe how the Germans first began forging the notes in 1940 in preparation for Hitler’s planned invasion of Britain. According to a captured German agent, the plan was to scatter the notes, £5 denominations and above, over the country from the air ‘in order to create loss of confidence and general confusion’... By the end of the war the German forgers had achieved their aim – even if it came too late for Hitler and the Third Reich.

… In the past few years, anti-Arab hatred and racism [in Israel] have reached monstrous proportions and are no longer restricted to a negligible minority. Many people dare to express it, and many more agree with them. All the discriminatory, separatist laws of the past few years are an authentic expression of that hatred … It is impossible to ignore what is happening to us: Palestinian children die in an accident, and many Israelis are happy about it - and are no longer even ashamed of it.

Paul Fromm, director of the Canadian Association for Free Expression, joins the IHR director in this look at the battle for free speech in Canada, a struggle with important implications for the US and the western world. Recorded during a speaking tour of three cities in western Canada. The two discuss the Ernst Zundel “Holocaust trials, “Human Rights Commission” hearings, efforts of major Jewish-Zionist groups to suppress freedom, and more, as well as encouraging news in the continuing struggle for free expression on the internet.

… Amazingly, "truth is no defense" in this bizarre proceeding. Neither the truthfulness (factuality) of a "complained of" writing, nor the motive of the writer, may be considered in determining if it is "likely" to expose persons to "hatred or contempt." … As a witness on Zündel's behalf, I experienced first-hand some of the absurdity and hypocrisy of Canada-style "human rights." … The same Jewish groups that demand, in the name of "human rights," that Zündel be silenced, have well-documented records as staunch defenders of, and apologists for, the Zionist regime in Israel that routinely, and as a matter of state policy, oppresses people on the basis of ancestry.

Celebrated scientists and development thinkers today warn that civilisation is faced with a perfect storm of ecological and social problems driven by overpopulation, overconsumption and environmentally malign technologies. In the face of an "absolutely unprecedented emergency", say the 18 past winners of the Blue Planet prize -- the unofficial Nobel for the environment – society has "no choice but to take dramatic action to avert a collapse of civilisation. Either we will change our ways and build an entirely new kind of global society, or they will be changed for us".

A German court quashed a British bishop's high-profile conviction for Holocaust denial for procedural reasons but said he may face a new trial on the same allegations. A court in Nuremberg ruled there were "irremediable procedural problems" in the case against Richard Williamson, who was fined 6,500 euros ($8,600) in July for denying key facts about the Nazi genocide. "The prosecutor now has the possibility of pressing charges on the basis of the same facts of the case," the court said in a statement. A spokesman for prosecutors told AFP that they indeed intended to file new charges "as quickly as possible" ...

The furor over the “Holocaust denial” remarks of Bishop Richard Williamson is not a controversy about historical truth, the role of history in society, anti-Semitism or “hate.” This affair is really about power -- about those who really wield it in our culture, as well as about how and why that power is used … A society’s real hierarchy of values, and of power, is shown by what it prohibits. The Williamson affair underscores a well-entrenched Jewish-Zionist bias in the cultural life of modern Western society, and reminds us, once again, of the power behind that bias.

Disclosures released today by the Obama campaign cite more prominent Jews among Obama’s top fundraisers. Prominent additions in the latest quarterly report include American Council for World Jewry chair Jack Rosen and former chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations Alan Solow. The Forward reported in December that Obama had lost no prominent Jewish fundraisers between 2008 and 2012.

Five wealthy people, led by Dallas industrialist Harold Simmons and Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, have donated nearly $1 of every $4 flowing to the super PACs raising unlimited money in this year's presidential race, a USA Today analysis shows. Those donations have helped new Republican-leaning outside groups swamp Democratic-friendly super PACs in fundraising — money that is used largely for attack ads ... In a Forbes magazine article posted Tuesday, Adelson said he is willing to donate another "$10 million or $100 million" to aid Gingrich.

The U.S. and Britain on Sunday urged Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear program as the White House's national security adviser arrived in the region, reflecting growing international jitters that the Israelis are poised to strike. In their warnings, both the chairman of the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and British Foreign Secretary William Hague said an Israeli attack on Iran would have grave consequences for the entire region and urged Israel to give international sanctions against Tehran more time to work. Dempsey said an Israeli attack is "not prudent," and Hague said it would not be "a wise thing."

Israel has protested to the United States over recent comments by senior American officials critical of any Israeli attack on Iran, saying this criticism "served Iran's interests." Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other senior officials made their displeasure known to Tom Donilon, U.S. national security adviser who has been in Israel this week. A senior Israeli official said Netanyahu and Barak told Donilon of their dissatisfaction with the interview given by Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, to CNN on Sunday … The Israeli officials also objected to a number of briefings senior American officials gave American correspondents, who wrote in recent weeks about a possible Israeli attack in Iran.

...His [Russel Stolfi’s] attack on Hitler biographers is as audacious and single-minded as his subject. He chides these writers for their inability to grasp Hitler’s greatness — indeed, for their systematic denigration of a man of genius. The pathological man they describe — vapid, a failed artist, second-rate in every respect, what Ian Kershaw, one of Hitler’s major biographers, calls an “unperson”— could not have achieved both the creative and destructive results that make him, in Stolfi’s words, the man of the century, one of Hegel’s world historical individuals … At the very least, Stolfi’s view is therapeutic; it is an unfortunate tendency in modern biography to psychologize everything, and, in this case, to interpret Hitler’s every move as the exercise of an evil psychosis.

… I confess that I read Stolfi’s biography with rising excitement. Suddenly Hitler was stepping forward commanding the stage — and without the intervening moral disapproval of the biographer. I don’t mean that Stolfi is blind to Hitler’s evil, but as his subtitle suggests he is trying to get beyond it — that is beyond it as the focus of his narrative—in order to show why the man and his followers could so identify with his messianic program to save Germany. Yes, save it. The very idea of even contemplating the notion of Hitler as a savior, in any guise, has probably already lost me (not to mention Stolfi) readers who find any effort to “understand” Hitler repugnant.

To deal with the massive unemployment and economic paralysis of the Great Depression, both the Roosevelt government in the US and Hitler’s government in Germany launched innovative and ambitious programs. Although Roosevelt’s “New Deal” programs helped only marginally, the Third Reich’s much more focused and comprehensive policies proved remarkably successful. Within three years unemployment was banished and Germany’s economy was booming. This remarkable achievement is little known and rarely acknowledged. Runtime: 35:38 mins.

... Books and memorabilia on the German leader's life have found a steady market in some sections of Indian society where he is idolised and admired, mostly by the young. The numbers are small but seem to be growing. Latest reports say Bollywood is now planning to cash in. A film - Dear Friend Hitler - is due to be released by the end of the year, focusing on the dictator's relationship with his mistress Eva Braun ... Books, T-shirts, bags and key-rings with his photo or name on do sell in India. And his autobiography, Mein Kampf, sells the most. Jaico, the largest publisher and distributor of Mein Kampf in India, has sold more than 100,000 copies in the last ten years.

... I tried to edit the page again. Within ten seconds I was informed that my citations to the primary documents were insufficient, as Wikipedia requires its contributors to rely on secondary sources, or, as my critic informed me, "published books." Another editor cheerfully tutored me in what this means: "Wikipedia is not 'truth,' Wikipedia is 'verifiability' of reliable sources. Hence, if most secondary sources which are taken as reliable happen to repeat a flawed account or description of something, Wikipedia will echo that."

… A well-known facet of the ideology propagated by this film industry is the basic division of the world between the Good and the Bad. The Good are the United States and the Bad are those whom the United States decrees as such. The Good are fundamentally Good and the Bad are fundamentally Bad. The United States is always in the right and always wins, whilst the “Bad Guys” are always in the wrong and always lose. Thus there cannot, there must not be any pity for the vanquished: their defeat proves that they were indeed criminals.

At one end of the flower-festooned table sat the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, perhaps the world’s most relentless America basher. At the other end sat Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s leader, who owes his government’s survival to the United States. And in the middle was Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, whose country’s complex relationship with Washington swings from pole to pole. If any conflict exists among the chief executives of the three neighboring Islamic nations, it certainly was not apparent Friday at the close of a two-day trilateral summit in Pakistan’s capital.

A new claim has surfaced that the Mormon church has posthumously baptized a Holocaust victim, this time Anne Frank. The allegations come just a week after The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apologized when it was brought to light that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were posthumously baptized by church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January. Mormon researcher Helen Radkey, who revealed the Wiesenthal baptisms, said this week she found Frank's name in proxy baptism records dated Feb. 18, showing the ritual was performed in the Santo Domingo Temple in the Dominican Republic.

The “standard” biographies of Adolf Hitler are inadequate and fundamentally flawed, says American historian Russell Stolfi in a remarkable new book, Hitler: Beyond Evil and Tyranny. The mass media and even supposedly scholarly works portray the German leader as a monstrous, criminal demagogue who was driven by irrational hatred and lust for power. In fact, contends Stolfi, Hitler was a prophetic, messianic and visionary figure, who should be understood along with such personalities as Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mohammed and Jesus.

… Stolfi has given us a remarkable portrait of one of history’s unique personalities. Hitler was on occasion, a Caesar, a messiah, a prophet, a charismatic orator, a Metternich, and on any given day he played these individual roles to perfection, but he was always 100 percent Hitler. We also are exposed to a Hitler who brought opera and art to the masses, who pioneered the modern interstate highway concept, who — following Henry Ford’s lead — brought the Volkswagen to Germany, and who — according to Liddell-Hart — fostered the development of the most efficient armed forces in history … The research and documentation of Professor Stolfi’s work is untainted by personal or societal bias, it is intellectually pristine, and it will be the standard by which all serious future Hitler biographies are judged.

… Stolfi analyzes Hitler as a world leader of astonishing capability, a leader unlike any other politician of his time. Hitler was a messiah, wishing to create a new Germany unencumbered by the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty that crippled German politics and the country's economy. Over and over, Hitler made decisions alone, drawing on an inner inspiration -- which Stolfi likens to Muhammad's impetus -- and commanding not only a loyal band of followers but the allegiance of millions … “The Allies did not win the war; Hitler lost it," Stolfi claims in this rousing book, which is sure to provoke outrage but also admiration for its author's attempt to offer a new and more comprehensive understanding of Hitler's psyche.

Longtime political analyst Pat Buchanan is being dropped by MSNBC as a result of the controversy surrounding his book, “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” “After ten years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well,” read a statement from the network … Buchanan’s departure comes four months after MSNBC suspended him for the publication of his most recent book. “The ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC,” said network president Phil Griffin in an interview at the time of Buchanan’s suspension.

My days as a political analyst at MSNBC have come to an end. After ten enjoyable years, I am departing, after an incessant clamor from the left that to permit me continued access to the microphones of MSNBC would be an outrage against decency, and dangerous … My four-months' absence from MSNBC and now my departure represent an undeniable victory for the blacklisters. The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL [Anti-Defamation League] is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate. All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.

Adolf Hitler had a son with a French teenager while serving as a soldier during the First World War, according to new evidence. / … Other elements which corroborate the story are official Wehrmacht, or German Army, papers which show that officers brought envelopes of cash to Miss Lobjoie during the Second World War. When Miss Lobjoie died, Mr Loret also found paintings in her attic which were signed by Hitler, who was an accomplished artist. In Germany, meanwhile, a picture of a woman painted by Hitler looked exactly like Miss Lobjoie … Hitler, who was born in an Austrian village, frequently spoke of his love for France, and especially for Paris.

Until his death in 1985, Jean-Marie Loret believed that he was the only son of Adolf Hitler. There is now renewed attention to evidence from France and Germany that apparently lends some credence to his claim … Loret claimed that his mother, Lobojoie Charlotte, met Hitler in 1914, when he was a corporal in the German army and she was 16. She described Hitler as "attentive and friendly." She and Hitler would take walks in the countryside, although conversation often was complicated by their language barrier. Yet, despite their differences, after an inebriated night in June 1917, little Jean-Marie was born in March 1918, according to Loret.

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's far right Front National, has been convicted of contesting crimes against humanity for saying the Nazi occupation was not "particularly inhumane". A Paris appeals court upheld the three-month suspended prison sentence and 10,000 euro fine handed to Le Pen in 2009. Le Pen had told the far-right magazine Rivarol in 2005: "in France at least the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, even if there were a number of excesses – inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq. km."

… The Vienna University for Economics seizes this opportunity to get rid of somebody who dared to speak up in the occupy-movement. They want to kick Franz Hörmann out for saying that history is always subjective and never free of ideology … and they now press criminal charges against him! They have the nerve to charge him as a holocaust denier – not for denying anything, but for not on cue expressing a sufficiently politically correct (PC) opinion on something that he is not an expert on … Holocaust political correctness is not ethical … The obsession with the holocaust is mere hypocrisy that saves us the bother to care about modern day exploitation.

… Irving went on us describe several sources of secret financial support enjoyed by Churchill. In addition to money supplied by the Czech government, Churchill was financed during the "wilderness years" between 1930 and 1939 by a slush fund emanating from a secret pressure group known as the Focus … Irving then revealed further details of Churchill's financing by the Czechs, as well as the facts of Churchill’s financial rescue by a wealthy banker of Austro-Jewish origins, Sir Henry Strakosch … Irving then gave a detailed account of the cynical maneuverings of Churchill to escalate the aerial campaign against Germany's civilian population …

… The business of the American government is insurance. Literally. If you look at how the federal government spends our money, it’s an insurance conglomerate protected by a large, standing army. But you wouldn’t know it to listen to the debate over the budget. When House Republicans talk about cutting spending and the Obama administration talks about freezing spending, neither group is talking about the vast expanse of the government’s commitments. They’re looking at a small corner of the budget, the 12.3 percent known as non-defense discretionary spending. The stuff that’s not Medicare, not Medicaid, not Social Security or the military. It’s the odds-and-ends, so to speak.

Winston Churchill, Britain’s premier during World War II, is honored for his stubborn “bull dog” hostility toward Hitler and Nazism, and his important role in ultimately destroying Third Reich Germany. In fact, his policies brought death and destruction on a mass scale, Soviet domination of central and eastern Europe, a shattered British empire, and Britain itself exhausted and bankrupt. The well-polished image of Churchill as a courageous and principled defender of freedom is based on a deceitful and ultimately dangerous narrative of history. In our own era, the enduring Churchill “cult” encourages policies today that are as harmful as they are short-sighted.

… The truth about Winston Churchill is that he was a menace to liberty, and a disaster for Britain, for Europe, for the United States of America, and for Western Civilization itself … With his lack of principles and scruples, Churchill was involved in one way or another in nearly every disaster that befell the 20th century. He helped destroy laissez-faire liberalism, he played a role in the Crash of 1929, he helped start World War I, and by bringing in America to help, prolonged the war and created the conditions for the rise of Nazism, prolonged World War II, laid the groundwork for Soviet domination, helped involve America in a cold war with Russia, and pioneered in the development of total war and undermining western civilized standards.

... Among other things Mr. Miller said of Canada's gun registry was: “That is what Adolf Hitler tried to do in the 1930s.” And so (deep breath in) here begins the re-education (yes, I'm Mao) of Larry Miller … The story that Adolf Hitler is the father of gun control is popular among those who oppose any sort of restrictions on firearms. This is the quote they often use … In fact, there's no record of Hitler ever having said any such thing, and he changed Germany's gun-control laws (actually introduced in 1928 under the Weimar regime) very little.

This year marks the 150th Anniversary of the War of 1862. Some call it the Sioux Uprising or the US-Dakota War. Hundreds of Dakota men and women as well as white settlers in Minnesota lost their lives during a short-lived war that resulted in the exile of many Dakota … After the battles were fought, many Dakota, mostly women and children were marched from Morton, Minnesota to Fort Snelling in bitter cold temperatures. They spent the winter at an internment camp. Many did not survive. Descendants of those who were marched to Fort Snelling mark this time through a special ceremony at the exact spot. They consider that 1862 internment camp the first concentration camp in the United States.

An Australian historian has uncovered hidden documents which reveal that African American troops used machine guns to attack their white officers in a siege on a US base in north Queensland in 1942. Information about the Townsville mutiny has never been released to the public. But the story began to come to light when James Cook University's Ray Holyoak first began researching why US congressman Lyndon B Johnson visited Townsville for three days back in 1942. What he discovered was evidence detailing one of the biggest uprisings within the US military.

A Finnish sci-fi comedy about Nazis invading Earth has become the most talked-about movie at this year's Berlin Film Festival. Iron Sky is a B-movie spoof that has been screening at the festival's sidebar event, called Panorama. The plot revolves around a group of Nazis who escape to the moon at the end of World War II to plan a new assault. Interest in the film has raised eyebrows at the Berlin film gala, which is more used to heavyweight fare … Iron Sky's plot is set in motion in 2018, when a Nazi soldier comes face to face with a US astronaut.

For the first time in nearly two decades of escalating tensions over Iran's nuclear program, world leaders are genuinely concerned that an Israeli military attack on the Islamic Republic could be imminent — an action that many fear might trigger a wider war, terrorism and global economic havoc. High-level foreign dignitaries, including the U.N. chief and the head of the American military, have stopped in Israel in recent weeks, urging leaders to give the diplomatic process more time to work. Israel seems unmoved, and U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has reportedly concluded that an Israeli attack on Iran is likely in the coming months.

… If a sensible Martian came down to Earth and looked at the sabre-rattling about Iran, I suspect he/she/it would be completely flummoxed. For our Martian visitor would observe two very capable states -- the United States and Israel -- threatening to attack a country that hardly seems worth the effort … The United States has fought four wars since 1990. It has bombed, invaded or occupied a half dozen countries in that period, leading to the deaths of thousands of people. Israel has been colonizing the West Bank since 1967, it invaded and occupied much of Lebanon from 1982 to 1999, and its armed forces pummeled Lebanon again in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09.

All the parties involved are shamelessly playing to domestic audiences in this election year. Israel keeps issuing threats it will attack Iran’s nuclear power installations, though some of its senior security officials downplay an alleged threat from Iran. US intelligence still maintains Iran is not working on nuclear weapons. UN nuclear inspectors confirm this view, though they have been pressured by the US, which pays a quarter of UN salaries, to suggest Iran might be working on something nefarious – though all Iran’s nuclear sites are under strict UN inspection and satellite surveillance.

… Romney is incapable of an arresting turn of phrase, let alone a fresh idea. Running on empty, he resorts to filling out his canned campaign orations with lengthy recitations of the lyrics from patriotic anthems. (“Believe in America” is his campaign slogan.) Take away the bogus boasts about “job creation” at Bain and the disowned Romneycare, and what else is there to Mitt Romney? Mainly, his unspecified service to his church and his perfect marriage. That reduces him to the stature of the Republican presidential candidate he most resembles, Thomas Dewey — in both his smug and wooden campaign style and in the overrating of his prospects by the political culture.

… Americans are a gullible and naive people. They have been complicit for 60 years in crimes that in Arnold Toynbee’s words "are comparable in quality" to the crimes of Nazi Germany. As Toynbee was writing decades ago, the accumulated Israeli crimes might now be comparable also in quantity. The US routinely vetoes United Nations condemnations of Israel for its brutal crimes against the Palestinians. Insouciant American taxpayers have been bled for a half century to provide the Israelis with superior military weapons with which Israelis assault their neighbors, all the while convincing America — essentially a captive nation — that Israel is the victim.

In this secret internal memo of July 19, 1969, National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger explains to President Richard Nixon the "dangers" of Israel's nuclear weapons program. Kissinger notes that Israel had broken its pledge to the US not to "introduce" nuclear weapons in the region. He also notes that if the US tries to force Israel to live up to its commitment by withholding delivery of US warplanes, "enormous political pressure will be mounted on us." This memo, declassified in 2007 after being "sanitized," lays out US policy regarding the Zionist state's nuclear arsenal: "While we might ideally like to halt actual Israeli possession, what we really want at a minimum may be just to keep Israeli possession from becoming an established international fact."

… "Washington may be called the head-quarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva," Dickens fumed in American Notes. "The thing itself is an exaggeration of nastiness, which cannot be outdone." As for the politicians, Dickens concluded that, like everyone else in America, they were motivated by money, not ideals. "I am disappointed," he wrote in a famous letter. "This is not the republic of my imagination." Washington, Dickens blasted in American Notes, was the home of: "Despicable trickery at elections; under-handed tamperings with public officers; and cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields, and hired pens for daggers".

Extremely rare and striking photos of the days leading up to and after the historic D-Day invasion have been put on display, nearly 70 years after World War II's dramatic turning point. The full-colour images, taken by photographer Frank Scherschel, display anxious American soldiers as they prepared for Operation Overlord, the code name for the Battle of Normandy. The photos also capture the celebratory tone upon the June 6 invasion’s success.

Thousands commemorated the bombing of Dresden and spoke against far-right extremism on Monday, the anniversary of the Allied air assault that devastated the eastern city. Police escorted a march of up to 1,600 neo-Nazis. Over 13,000 people were part of a human chain on Monday to mark the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 and make a statement against far-right extremism. The chain stretched 3.6 kilometers (two miles) through the city center. Locals also lit around 10,000 candles in front of the city's Frauenkirche, which was destroyed during the bombing of the city and rebuilt after German Reunification.

The British government has long denied that wartime air raids on German cities were intended to kill as many civilians as possible. In fact, the raids, led by Arthur Harris, were motivated largely by a desire to hit back and destroy indiscriminately / … “The aim of [Britain’s] Bomber Command should be unambiguously and publicly stated," he [Harris] wrote in 1943. "That aim is the destruction of German cities, the killing of German workers and the disruption of civilised life throughout Germany." He wanted the government to declare its commitment to "the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale", and he expressed his contempt of the official eagerness "to downplay the obliteration of German cities and their inhabitants".

Information, perspective and commentary on the Allied fire-bombing of Dresden, February 1945, compiled by British historian David Irving. Evidence that the death toll was much larger than the now “official” figure of about 25,000.

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners. Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies. “We got to have a little Old West up here in Detroit. That’s what it’s gonna take,” Detroit resident Julia Brown told The Daily.

A Budapest court has rejected a libel lawsuit of a Nazi-concentration camp survivor who claims Nobel Peace Prize winning author and human rights activist Elie Wiesel "lies" about his Holocaust past. Hungarian-born Nikolaus (Miklós) Grüner, now living in Sweden, sued Wiesel supporter and rabbi Slomó Köves for accusing him of "falsifying history” with a decades-long investigation … Grüner claims that Wiesel stole the identity of his friend and fellow concentration camp inmate Lázár Wiesel, who helped him survive the horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau and satellite camps in Nazi-occupied Poland and in Buchenwald camp, in Germany. The first names “Elie” and “Lázár” are similar to the Hebrew name, Eleazar.

… No historical analogy is remotely close to being perfect, but in terms of the psychology of the actors, this circumstance resembles the July Crisis of 1914 and the blank check Berlin issued to its client in Vienna … All these factors compose a brew potentially so toxic that one would think it would give even the most belligerent chickenhawk pause before quaffing it. Washington's political class is apparently counting on the short memory of the electorate …

… Today I want to focus on another remarkable feature of this situation: the absence of any sort of meaningful diplomacy between the United States and the country whose citizens we would be attacking and killing if we were to launch a strike. The United States had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union from 1933 on, including the period when Joseph Stalin was murdering millions … This is not the behavior one expects of a confident, mature great power: it is the behavior of a government that is either afraid it will get tricked by devious Persians, or that is more worried about domestic criticism than foreign consequences.

… The middle finger, extended with the other fingers held beneath the thumb, is thus documented to have expressed insult and belittlement for more than two millennia … "It's one of the most ancient insult gestures known," says anthropologist Desmond Morris … The gesture is widely known to Americans as flipping the bird, or just giving someone the finger. The Romans had their own name for it: digitus impudicus - the shameless, indecent or offensive finger.

His parents married two days before the crash of 1929. He was reared on nightmarish stories of currency that proved worthless, told by relatives whose patriarch had fled Germany in the dark of night when his debts were about to ruin him. Hard times, and fear of worse, were constants in Ron Paul’s boyhood home. His father and mother worked tirelessly running a small dairy, and young Ron showed the same drive — delivering The Pittsburgh Press, mowing lawns, scooping ice cream as a soda jerk. He also embraced their politics, an instinctive conservatism that viewed Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman as villains and blamed Democrats for getting America into wars.

Iran has broken the "idol" of the Holocaust underpinning the creation of the Israeli state and US hegemony, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday in a speech marking the anniversary of his country's 1979 Islamic revolution. "The Iranian nation has smashed a new and modern idol. The world arrogance (the United States) and colonialists (the West), in order to dominate the world, created an idol called the Zionist regime (Israel)," Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in central Tehran. "The spirit of this idol was a story called the Holocaust... The Iranian nation with courage and wisdom smashed this idol to free the people of the West (of its hold)," he said.

The Constitution has seen better days. Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning … The United States Constitution is terse and old, and it guarantees relatively few rights … Americans recognize rights not widely protected, including ones to a speedy and public trial, and are outliers in prohibiting government establishment of religion … Only two percent of the world’s constitutions protect, as the Second Amendment does, a right to bear arms. (Its brothers in arms are Guatemala and Mexico.)

… Numerous jobless workers who say they feel betrayed by the European Union, globalization and deindustrialization are turning not to the Socialist Party, but to the National Front, which promises a kind of patriotic focus on French jobs, French pride and French money. Some who once voted Communist now join others who are traditionally on the right — like the hunting and fishing lovers who abound here — to support Ms. Le Pen.

… The Boasian revolution in anthropology represented such a dramatic departure from preceding Jewish thinking about race, that an examination of Jewish racial writing from 1880 to 1940 forces us, notes Hart, “to reorient the way we think about the normative narrative of the Jewish past” according to which historians have “told the story of the relationship between Jews and race largely within the framework of victimhood,” whereby “racial science in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was one of the chief weapons used against Jews.” The abandonment of Darwinian race theory by Jewish anthropologists from the 1920s and 1930s necessitated that they obscure the inherently racial nature of Judaism, in order to forestall charges of hypocrisy.

When real history is finally written, mainstream social sciences during most of the twentieth century will be exposed as consisting largely of ethnically motivated disinformation. Much has already been written about the subversion of American anthropology: the shift from legitimate science to ideological pap under the direction of the Jewish immigrant Franz Boas. Much less has been written about how psychology was transformed from a branch of natural science into a section of the Marxist-influenced social sciences. In this paper I will provide information on the subversion of psychology, pointing out the role of Boas and others in the subversion of psychology.

High drama exists in Israel's soccer league for reasons other than goals scored, as political tension and racism sometimes play out on and off the fields. The Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, most recently owned by Dan Adler and Adam Levine of the U.S., remains closely associated with its fans' far right-wing politics and slurs against opposing players. The club faces numerous penalties because of fan behavior, with Beitar fans often chanting personal and religious insults at other players … Racism, mostly against Arabs, has plagued Israeli soccer for years.

Where do dictators go to relax? Much is known of how Hitler masterminded his war effort, but not so much about how he spent his 'down time'. Well, he had surprisingly lavish tastes – as shown by our never-before-seen photos. Between 1936 and 1945, Hugo Jaeger served as one of Adolf Hitler's personal photographers and was granted unprecedented access to the Fuhrer's private moments. His pictures give a rare insight into what Hitler saw each day, and how he lived - fine furnishings, delicate drapes, paintings and sculptures from around the world. Hitler's rooms in his Berlin apartment above the 'New Chancellery' reflects the Fuhrer's baroque, often sentimental taste.

The UN’s highest court has confirmed German immunity from prosecution over cases involving Nazi-era war crimes. The International Court of Justice in The Hague threw out a ruling by Italy’s highest court holding Germany liable for the 1944 Nazi massacre of 250 Italian partisans in Tuscany. Germany went to The Hague, arguing that a 1961 compensation payment of DM 40 million to Italy had fulfilled German obligations under international law. It argued that no court had jurisdiction to force a foreign country to pay reparations and that the Italian ruling violated international rules on foreign state immunity.

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders. The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, known by various acronyms, including MEK, MKO and PMI, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion …

The appeals to Israel by numerous European diplomats attending the Munich security conference last weekend have led to growing concern that Israeli plans to attack Iran are imminent. The very number of warnings to Israel, and the emphasis with which diplomats have expressed concern, suggest that Israeli plans to attack Iran are real and scheduled to be carried out this June or July, analysts say … This way, Heisbourg said, Israel would not have to fear "any immediate political consequences, since none of the U.S. candidates would dare to oppose the attack during the campaign."

President Barack Obama says the United States is working in "lockstep" with Israel to solve the brewing crisis over Iran's disputed nuclear program. Obama said Sunday that the United States does not think Israel has decided whether to attack Iran, and said he hopes the standoff can be resolved diplomatically. Obama's comments came as Israel's major allies in the West were working hard to talk it out of a unilateral military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing forcefully that an attack ultimately would only strengthen the regime in Tehran.

In his pre-Super Bowl interview on Sunday night, President Obama went farther than ever before in stating his view that U.S. and Israeli interests are identical. Obama even topped Vice President Joe Biden who has repeatedly said that there must be "no daylight, no daylight" between U.S. and Israeli policies. Obama's statement was more disturbing because he was not speaking in the abstract but rather about the possibility of war with Iran. Obama said, "My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel."

… Sociopathic calls for aggressive attacks on other nations and cheap invocations of Hitler are not worth commenting on: neocons churn those out reflexively … Iran’s total annual military spending is $7 billion; an increase of 127% would take it to $15.8 billion — also known as: less than 2% of total U.S. military spending … American political officials and commentators feel free to insist, with a straight face, that Iran is an aggressor nation posing a serious threat to the U.S.: such a serious threat, in fact, that war may be necessary to stop it.

In a new election campaign video, the President pledges “unshakable” support for Israel, and Israeli leaders – including Benjamin Netanayahu, Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak – praise Obama and explain how he has strengthened the US-Israel relationship.

Israel’s highest officials tell American journalists their air force may attack Iran’s nuclear facilities this spring, although Israeli and American intelligence agencies say the Islamic republic has no plan to build a bomb. The officials might be bluffing, but the threats pose a problem for the Obama administration. … Israel’s political leaders, though apparently not its military and intelligence chiefs, want to bomb Iran, not because they fear an attack should it acquire a nuke — which would be suicidal for Iran, since Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons — but rather because Iran, now close to Iraq thanks to the U.S. regime change there, could inhibit Israel’s ability to have its way with its neighbors and the long-suffering, occupied Palestinians, especially in the blockaded Gaza Strip.

A major factor in America’s ever more obvious decline, says Weber in this insightful, informed and vigorously presented talk, is that the guiding ideologies and operative historical narratives of both conservatives and liberals are fundamentally defective. The often-repeated boast of American “exceptionalism,” he says, is not just ignorant and arrogant, it’s dangerous. Address given at an IHR meeting, Dec. 10, 2011. Runtime: 44:06 mins.

In a new tell-all book, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,” now-69-year-old Mimi Alford writes candidly about her 18-month affair with the former president, starting when she was a 19-year-old White House intern. A review by the New York Post summarizes some of the explosive details of the book, including Kennedy taking the intern’s virginity, pimping her out to “first friend” David Powers while he watched, forcing her to take drugs, helping to put her in touch with a then-illegal abortion doctor during a false-alarm pregnancy scare, flying her to Washington from her all-girls school while his wife was away …

A leading European dissident scholar, Robert Faurisson, met on Feb. 2 with Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the 30th International Fajr Film Festival in Tehran. Prof. Faurisson was part of a French delegation invited to a ceremony for the film Un Homme ("A Man"), produced and directed by Paul-Eric Blanrue. The documentary was submitted for the second international conference on "Hollywoodism and the Cinema," which is taking place in conjunction with the festival.

For more than 20 years, Robert Faurisson has been Europe's foremost Holocaust revisionist scholar … After years of private research and study, Dr. Faurisson first made public his skeptical views about the Holocaust extermination story in two items published in December 1978 and January 1979 in the influential Paris daily Le Monde … On September 25, 1997, Faurisson came to trial for a statement made in April 1996 about the Garaudy-Abbé Pierre affair in which he mentioned "the imposture of the Nazi gas chambers." … For his views Faurisson has repeatedly been a victim of physical assault.

French film director, Claude Lanzmann, was detained and investigated by Ben Gurion Airport officials on Tuesday for allegedly sexually harassing a female security worker. Lanzmann, who is Jewish and was in Israel for a visit, arrived at the airport accompanied by two others in order to return to Paris. According to the security worker’s complaint, Lanzmann passed the security check without any difficulties. Upon completing the check, he allegedly came up to her from behind, and hugged and kissed her against her will.

The commander of a group of U.S. Marines who were photographed in Afghanistan with what looks like a Nazi SS flag concluded they were acting out of ignorance rather than bigotry and decided not to punish them, a Marine Corps spokesman said on Thursday. Outrage over the 2010 photo ricocheted around the Internet and threatened to snowball into the latest war-zone scandal for the Marine Corps, and at least one anti-discrimination group called for a Pentagon inquiry of the incident.

Israel and Germany signed a contract a few weeks ago finalizing the sale of a sixth Dolphin-class submarine to the Israel Navy, The Jerusalem Post has learned. The Defense Ministry initiated talks with Germany last year about buying a sixth submarine, but Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government initially balked when Israel asked that it underwrite part of the cost. In late November, though, Germany announced that it had approved the deal and that it would pay for part of the vessel.

Berlin's biggest opera house, the Deutsche Oper, has been forced to backtrack on plans to stage a re-launched version of Adolf Hitler's favourite Wagner opera on the Nazi leader's birthday. Hitler, who as a young man became fanatical about Richard Wagner's works, said the composer's 1842 production, Rienzi, was his all-time favourite and an inspiration for his politics. It tells the story of Cola di Rienzi, a medieval Italian folk hero who leads a people's uprising against the nobility. The Nazi leader is said to have liked the work so much that he asked for a manuscript of the production to be given to him on his 50th birthday.

… All Israeli wars since 1973 were flawed wars of choice. Israel initiated all of them. None of them was inevitable, none resulted in any benefit that could not have been achieved using different means. In fact all of them were disastrous for us, even if the disaster was even greater for the other side. The most megalomaniac of them all, the Second Lebanon War, was also the most disastrous of them all. This bears remembering when debating the even greater megalomania of an attack on Iran. In both the Second Lebanon War and the war in the Gaza Strip Israel lost more than it gained. But these were only the trailers for what is liable to happen in the First Iran War.

I spent last year in Afghanistan, visiting and talking with U.S. troops and their Afghan partners. My duties with the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force took me into every significant area where our soldiers engage the enemy … What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground … Instead, I witnessed the absence of success on virtually every level … How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding and behind an array of more than seven years of optimistic statements by U.S. senior leaders in Afghanistan?

In spite of a basic hostility between Third Reich Germany and international Jewry, German National Socialists and Jewish Zionists shared similar views about ethnicity and nationhood, and worked together in the years 1933 through 1940-41 for what each group believed was in its own best national interest. The Hitler government vigorously promoted Zionism and Jewish emigration to Palestine. In collaborating with the Zionists for a mutually desirable and humane solution to a complex problem, Third Reich Germany was willing to make foreign exchange sacrifices, impair relations with Britain, and anger Arabs.

History can be deceptive. It’s fair to say that some of the sensational never-published-before documents, in this book [51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis], will shock those who have accepted Zionism and its supposed history, at face value, as a political movement that was the hope of the Jews. Lenni Brenner, the intrepid author of “Zionism in the Age of Dictators,” reveals disturbing new evidence in his latest effort, that suggest just the opposite. In fact, he makes a compelling case that the Zionist record was “dishonorable.” … For openers, Brenner showed how the Zionists had a long history of shameless cooperation with the Nazis, especially after the dictator Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933.

… Who, then, wants war with Iran? All those who would like to see exactly that happen to Iran. And who are they? The Netanyahu government and its echo chamber in U.S. politics and media, the neoconservatives, members of Congress, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum … Israel has 200 atomic bombs and three ways to deliver them, while Iran has never built, tested, or weaponized a nuclear device. Who is the existential threat to whom here?

Following protests from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, YouTube removed a series of ten animated anti-Semitic and Holocaust Denial clips, saying that they were in violation of the video site’s policy prohibiting hate speech. The videos are animated versions of the notorious Iranian book from 2008 that in its preface, seeks to “denounce the conspicuous lie of the ‘planed (sic) murder of six million Jews during the Second World War’ allegedly called ‘Holocaust’. The lie that is so obvious that there is no need for any further explanation. The lie by which the Palestine occupier Zionists have justified their occupying of Palestine and lots of their crimes for years.”

A book by a former mistress of President John F Kennedy has revealed new details of their relationship. Extracts in the US media of Once Upon A Secret by Mimi Alford recount the affair she had with the president whilst an intern at the White House. She also relates Mr Kennedy's thoughts on the Cuban missile crisis and the death of his baby son. The previewed parts of the book contain graphic details of the president's milieu, including tales of drug use. Excerpts published in the New York Post also describe how Ms Alford - then 19-year-old Mimi Beardsley - lost her virginity to the president in 1962, after she had been invited to swim at the White House pool. The affair went on to last 18 months.

A US Marine scout sniper unit in Afghanistan posed for a photo in front of a flag resembling the logo of the Nazi SS, the Marine Corps says. In a statement, a Marine spokesman said use of the SS symbol was not acceptable, and that the Corps had now addressed the issue. The spokesman did not specify what action had been taken. Marines in the September 2010 photo, taken in Sangin, Afghanistan, are no longer in that unit, he added. The photo was brought to the attention of a Marine inspector general in November 2011, and investigations then revealed which unit the men were serving in.

A noted collector of presidential memorabilia pleaded guilty on Tuesday to stealing thousands of rare historical documents, including copies of speeches by President Franklin Roosevelt, from a presidential library and historical societies. Barry Landau, 63, who had promoted himself as a U.S. presidential historian, pleaded guilty to conspiring to steal major artwork and theft of major artwork from December 2010 to July 2011. An accomplice who helped steal the documents pleaded guilty in October.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has a lot on his mind these days, from cutting the defense budget to managing the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But his biggest worry is the growing possibility that Israel will attack Iran over the next few months. Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June — before Iran enters what Israelis described as a “zone of immunity” to commence building a nuclear bomb … The administration appears to favor staying out of the conflict unless Iran hits U.S. assets, which would trigger a strong U.S. response … U.S. officials don’t think that Netanyahu has made a final decision to attack, and they note that top Israeli intelligence officials remain skeptical of the project. But senior Americans doubt that the Israelis are bluffing.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey told Israeli leaders Jan. 20 that the United States would not participate in a war against Iran begun by Israel without prior agreement from Washington, according to accounts from well-placed senior military officers … But the Israeli government remains defiant about maintaining its freedom of action to make war on Iran, and it is counting on the influence of right-wing extremist views in U.S. politics to bring pressure to bear on Obama to fall into line with a possible Israeli attack during the election campaign this fall. Obama still appears reluctant to break publicly and explicitly with Israel over its threat of military aggression against Iran, even in the absence of evidence Iran has decided to build a nuclear weapon.

Israel's major allies in the West are working hard to talk it out of a unilateral military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, arguing forcefully that an attack ultimately would strengthen, not weaken, the regime in Tehran. The United States is leading the persuasion initiative, even though Washington largely has concluded that outside argument will have little effect on Israeli decision-making. Iran's regime says it wants to extinguish the Jewish state, and the West accuses it of assembling the material and know-how to build a nuclear bomb. Israel fears that Iran is fast approaching a point at which a limited military strike no longer would be enough to head off an Iranian bomb.

Last week, as Jewish Lobbies continue to invest enormous efforts in dictating and imposing a rigid and unquestionable Holocaust narrative, Israeli Haaretz published a short, succinct and courageous report challenging the validity of the Wannsee Conference as proof of the Nazi ‘final solution’. Just ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day, the Israeli paper reported that Dr. Norbert Kampe (63), director of the "Wannsee Conference" Memorial Centre in Berlin, has challenged some of the most widely-accepted historical ‘facts’ associated with the conference and its meaning … Once again we learn that some Israelis are far ahead of the Western press and academia in their criticism of Jewish ideology in general and the Zionist Holocaust narrative in particular.

The world economy may be bracing for another grim year, but political donors in the United States are breaking out their checkbooks to finance what is expected to be the most expensive presidential election in American history. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates $6 billion will be spent in the U.S. elections by campaigns, political parties and corporations hoping to propel their candidates into the White House and what writer Mark Twain once called the "best Congress money can buy." The projected price tag of the 2012 U.S. election dwarfs that of other nations …

He’s an ardent supporter of Israel. A megabillionaire casino mogul whose Las Vegas Sands Corp. is under federal investigation. And the self-proclaimed “richest Jew in the world.” Sheldon Adelson is also, far and away, the biggest patron of Newt Gingrich’s Republican presidential bid. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, have pumped $10 million into a political action committee backing Gingrich that is run by the former House speaker’s onetime aides. Campaign finance experts say the two $5 million contributions are among the largest known political donations in U.S. history.

President Barack Obama pledged to combat Holocaust denial in a message marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In his message, Obama said the United States would “pledge to speak truth to those who deny the Holocaust.” “As we celebrate the strength and resilience of survivors, we pledge to stand strong against all those who would commit atrocities, against the resurgence of anti-Semitism, and against hatred in all its forms,” he said. Friday marked the seventh International Holocaust Remembrance Day …

The governments of Israel and Germany will sign Wednesday an agreement whereby Germany will support Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial and Institute, to the sum of one million euro annually, from 2012-2021. The agreement signifies the German government's wish to help facilitate Yad Vashem’s various activities in Israel and globally which further commemoration, documentation and education of the events of the Holocaust.

A survey carried out two days before Holocaust Memorial Day shows more than a fifth of young Germans do not know the name of Auschwitz or what happened there. Twenty one per cent of people aged between 18 and 30 quizzed about the most notorious Nazi extermination camp had not heard of it, the survey revealed. And almost half of all those canvassed by the Forsa research institute said they had never visited a concentration camp despite the fact Germany has made all of those on its soil permanent memorials to the dead.

… Phalanxes of white-helmeted Austrian riot police stood equipped with shields and truncheons. "Nazis Piss Off, Nobody Misses You!" read one of the banners held aloft by demonstrators. Ugly scuffles ensued. One man was reported to have been arrested after being caught carrying a kilo of explosives. The event they were so vociferously objecting to was a traditional Vienna student ball known as the "Korporierten-Fest". Started in 1952 as part of Vienna's traditional ball season, the student ball has gained an unsavoury reputation for being a white-tie extravaganza for the elite of Europeans' political far right.

The official delegation honoring Frederick the Great’s 300th birthday had just finished laying a laurel wreath and a grand cross of white flowers at his grave here on Tuesday when a 70-year-old retiree quietly slipped in behind them and placed a small potato on the gray slab of stone that marks the monarch’s resting place. “I’m a born Potsdamer and my father was, too, and I guess a little of the old Prussiandom is still in my veins,” said the man, Harry Günther, a retired engineer, standing before the yellow walls of Frederick’s magnificent summer palace, Sanssouci, on a chilly, foggy morning, a light coating of snow on the grass. He praised Frederick’s Prussian virtues, like hard work, honesty and thrift.

A British publisher who planned to sell extracts of Adolf Hitler's political manifesto Mein Kampf on the streets of Germany has backed down. The state of Bavaria, which owns the copyright to the book, had threatened legal action if publisher Peter McGee sold pamphlets containing the extracts. Mr McGee sells reproductions of Nazi-era newspapers along with historians' analysis of their content. He will now render Hitler's text illegible when his pamphlets are sold.

It’s a World War II campaign largely forgotten, a coastal reign of terror Joe Hoyt and a team of marine archaeologists are determined to bring into sharp focus 70 years later. During the first six months of 1942, German U-boats, often hunting in wolf packs, sank ship after ship just miles off the East Coast of the United States, concentrating their ambushes along North Carolina, where conditions were most favorable. From the beaches, civilians could see the explosions as the submarines sank more Allied tonnage in those months than the entire Japanese Navy would destroy in the Pacific during the entire course of the war.

For 66 years, they lay unseen, first in a vault on the Upper West Side, more recently in a special cabinet. Now the New York Historical Society plans to put them on public display alongside a silver cigar box, a silver ice cream dish and the silver controller handle that Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. used when he drove the first subway train, in 1904: A knife and fork with the initials A and H, for Adolf Hitler. The historical society is including the Hitler flatware, part of a dinner service made in celebration of his 50th birthday in 1939, in an exhibition of 150 of the “most aesthetically and historically compelling pieces” in its collection …

A Queens [New York] lawyer has been suspended for six months for falsely accusing a New Jersey state trooper of using anti-Semitic slurs against him, according to a ruling released yesterday. Attorney Elliott Dear said he made up the outrageous allegations in hopes of getting out of a speeding ticket. Court papers say the unidentified trooper pulled over Dear, an orthodox Jew, for going 84 in a 55-mph zone while driving with his wife in 2007. Six days after getting the ticket, Dear sent a letter to the traffic court saying, "This ticket shall be dismissed immediately" since he wasn't speeding and "the officer called me a 'Jew kike' — and this prejudice obviously was the cause for the ticket," the papers say.

Ultra-Orthodox young men curse and spit at Christian clergymen in the streets of Jerusalem's Old City as a matter of routine. In most cases the clergymen ignore the attacks, but sometimes they strike back … The Greek Patriarchy's clergymen have been cursed and spat on by ultra-Orthodox men in the street for many years. "They walk past me and spit," says Father Gabriel Bador, 78, a senior priest in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate. "Mostly I ignore it, but it's difficult … “It happens a lot," says Archbishop Aristarchos, the chief secretary of the patriarchate.

Abraham Lincoln is honored as “The Great Emancipator,” as a champion of equal rights for all, regardless of race, and as the president who waged war to “free the slaves.” In fact, he sought to make the US an all-white republic that would be “an outlet for free white people everywhere, the world over.” He supported ambitious efforts to resettle or “colonize” blacks in Africa or central America. A common mistake in trying to learn from the past is to evaluate the behavior and motives of people in history on the basis of attitudes and values that prevail in the present.

In 2009 the US not only inaugurated its first black president - it also honoured the president who paved Barack Obama's way to the country's highest post. Events across the nation marked the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, celebrating a man widely seen as the greatest US president - the secular saint who redeemed America's original sin of slavery … Despite his visceral hatred of slavery, Mr Yacovone says, Lincoln - like the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries - never believed in the equality of races. "He supported enactment of the anti-fugitive slave law, he supported exclusion of black jurors and all basic civil rights," Mr Yacovone says.

… In North America, the Brotherhood has long been wrongly branded an extremist, even terrorist organization by the seriously misinformed. This view is not only wrong, but harmful to US Mideast policy … So far, the Brotherhood has said or done nothing to challenge the United States or Europe except for calling for justice for the Palestinians. But this, of course, was the primary reason why the US kept dictator Hosni Mubarak in power for thirty years: he secretly colluded with and aided Israel, and maintained fierce opposition to US foes Iran and Syria.

The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC. The leaked report, derived from thousands of interrogations, claims the Taliban remain defiant and have wide support among the Afghan people. It alleges that Pakistan knows the locations of senior Taliban leaders. A BBC correspondent says the report is painful reading for international forces and the Afghan government.

A USA Today analysis of state voter registration statistics shows registered Democrats declined in 25 of the 28 states that register voters by party. Republicans dipped in 21 states, while independents increased in 18 states.The trend is acute in states that are key to next year's presidential race. In the eight swing states that register voters by party, Democrats' registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans' by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.The pattern continues a decades-long trend that has seen a diminution in the power of political parties, giving rise to independents as Ross Perot and Ralph Nader and the popularity this year of libertarian Republican Ron Paul.

A new opinion poll indicates more Czechs are now in favor of abolishing decrees issued by post-war Czechoslovak president Edvard Beneš, which provided the legal basis after WWII for the expulsion and confiscation of property of Sudeten Germans who could not prove they did not support the Nazis. More respondents have no clear opinion on the issue. … Respondents were also asked about their attitude towards the expulsions. 42% said they consider the expulsions were fair; 25% said they were unfair but that it’s necessary to draw a line under the past; 7% said they were unfair and an apology is due; and 4% said they were unfair and compensation should be paid or property restituted.

Edvard Beneš, President of Czechoslovakia and an important figure of the World War Two Allied coalition, calls on May 16, 1945, for the "liquidation" of Germans and Hungarians in post-war Czechoslovakia. From the Czech documentary "Zabíjení po česku" or "Killings Czech style," 2010. Runtime: 1:27 mins.

A 1913 painting by Nazi Germany's dictator Adolf Hitler sold for 32,000 euros ($42,300) in a Slovak internet auction on Sunday, the Darte auction house said. The starting price for the painting titled Maritime Nocturno was set at 10,000 euros, while an expert put its value at 25,000 euros, said Darte, which sold the painting in a closed VIP auction. The mixed-media painting depicts a full moon over a glittering seascape. "The painting has been offered for sale by an unnamed family of a Slovak painter who probably met Hitler personally when he was struggling to become an artist in Vienna during the early 20th century," Darte owner Jaroslav Krajnak said earlier.

Tucked away for decades in a cabinet in Thomas Edison’s laboratory, just behind the cot in which the great inventor napped, a trove of wax cylinder phonograph records has been brought back to life after more than a century of silence. The cylinders, from 1889 and 1890, include the only known recording of the voice of the powerful chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Two preserve the voice of Helmuth von Moltke, a venerable German military strategist, reciting lines from Shakespeare and from Goethe’s “Faust” into a phonograph horn.

Anti-Jewish feeling is "significantly" entrenched in German society, according to a report by experts appointed by the Bundestag (parliament). They say the internet has played a key role in spreading Holocaust denial, far-right and extreme Islamist views, according to the DPA news agency. They also speak of "a wider acceptance in mainstream society of day-to-day anti-Jewish tirades and actions" l… The report's authors put Germany midway in their assessment of other European countries in relation to the spread of anti-Semitism. They see extremely high levels of anti-Jewish sentiment in parts of Poland, Hungary and Portugal.